“Very poor customer service indeed, with reliance on weasel words in your terms and conditions to avoid your responsibility.
Despite significant transit damage to expensive solid oak door, i.e whilst still in your custody, you then refused to honour proper replacement of defective item.
This is not acceptable practice as the received item was not fit for purpose. You need to record the condition of goods as delivered, not foist that responsibility onto your customer.”
Hi Colin McDonald,
Thank you for taking the time to leave us a review.
I'm sorry to hear that one of your doors had arrived with transit damage. I have looked into your correspondence and can see that the doors were on site with you for nearly two weeks before we were made aware of the issue.
As per our terms and conditions, the paperwork that arrived with your goods and the pre-contractual information that is emailed to you with your order confirmation, the doors are to be checked and signed for at the point of delivery and certainly within 48 hours of receipt.
We have specific guidelines in place which are stated within our Terms and Conditions, where the reporting of damages/issues must be followed to allow us to rectify the problem as soon as possible with confidence that we are sure of where the damage had occurred, such as in transit etc.
Section 11.1 of our Terms and Conditions, which you agreed to during the ordering process states the below:
If you have any questions or complaints about the product, please contact us as soon as possible and within two working days of delivery
The Consumer Rights Act 2015, states that the retailer is responsible for the condition of the goods until they are delivered to you, so any damage or breakage en route is the responsibility of us, not you or the carrier. However, we are only responsible until the goods are delivered and signed for. Failing to note the damage at the point of delivery and outside of the advised 48 hours means we have no way of establishing where the error lies.
The Sale of Goods Act does allow for reasonable time to examine new goods. The amount of reasonable time is not noted within the Sales of Goods Act but as a responsible seller, we must ensure that we do allow time to check over the goods to which we deem 48 hours to be a reasonable timeframe. This amount of time is stated in the paperwork that arrived with your goods, the pre-contractual information that is emailed with your order confirmation, and is outlined as mentioned above, on our website also and in the Terms and Conditions that you agreed to.
I am sorry, but there is nothing further we can do due to the time taken to report the issue.
Kindest regards,
Maria
“Please don't believe the fake rave reviews for this company. They are a fraud. Our 'solid oak door' is actually vaneer and made from multiple layers of wood. What's more we have had to replace our door within the first year as it's not fit for purpose. Their external doors are not weatherproof and need to be shielded from the rain, which is almost impossible even our British weather. A total waste of money and poor customer service resulting in us having to get a brand new door elsewhere.”
“The doors they sell are NOT solid Oak doors and are NOT suitable for external use. They are constructed doors with an Oak veneer of about 1cm.
Read the reviews here on Google, reviews.io rather than trustpilot.com which are not very specific.
Bought two "Solid Oak Mexicano Contemporary External Door", one de-laminated and the second warped so that after it was fitted the latch would no longer work as that whole side had dropped by 2 - 4mm.
There is an A4 piece of paper delivered with each door which is basically an attempt at a waiver which they will claim you either did not read or follow the instructions properly if you do have problems.
Below are some excerpts from the "customer service" team:
Customer Service Agent: "Should the issues have been present at the time of fitting the door, this would have been noticed during the oiling process and should have been reported. However, as these doors have been in situe for some time with no issues being reported to us, we can only decipher that this happened on site once fitted."
Me: Everything happened after the doors were fitted, so how could we notice them before? The doors had three layers of oil applied, one more than they recommended. "Some time", was about 6 weeks...
Customer Service Agent: "As the doors are not covered by a porch or canopy moisture has permeated the wood causing the wood to swell and contract. I can see you have issues with the complete frame cracking due to the same issue."
Me: It is correct there is no canopy, however both doors are in extremely sheltered positions with walls on three sides (see photo attached), and the guttering and barge boards above the doors provide about 24 inches of cover. They did not specify a minimum amount of cover the canopy should provide. Also even with a canopy there will always be some moisture landing on the door at the bottom, where ours de-laminated. Our door is easterly facing so not facing the south westerly prevailing weather.
Where they mention "I can see you have issues with the complete frame cracking due to the same issue" what she is referring to is the 12 inch solid oak frame the doors are set into, worked from Oak solid oak trunks. We are of course not asking for the frame to be replaced, we're very happy with it because guess what, ITS SOLID OAK!
You pay your money and make your choice they say, but just look at how these doors are marketed on their website. "Solid Oak Mexicano Contemporary External Door" they say in the headline, 100% solid oak they shout in several places. Then in the product description they have a line that says "Our range of external doors are made from solid oak, however we do not recommend usage in exposed areas i.e. direct rain or hot sun, therefore we recommend use in sheltered areas with a porch or canopy".
Most external doors I see are exposed to rain and direct sunlight (its pretty much in the job description for a door!) which most solid oak products can cope with, so why can't these I wonder?”
“3 months and still waiting for 7 solid oak doors. First 2 firedoors were incorrect width (tried to label as firedoors!!) and now refusing to answer my calls/return calls or answer my emails and refusing all refund requests. Taking legal action to recover.”
“There are good doors, and bad doors. The rustic doors that this shop sell are extremely bad. They do not accept returns for faulty doors, as they state that such doors are 'as specified'.
Here is a description (as given in an email to me, from their support team) of what to expect:
· Filler
· Live knots/solid knots, dead knots/loose knots (must use filler if you can see through door),
· Break out
· Rough Patches (max 40% per plank)
· Superficial checks, Shake, Splits – surface only not structural
· Profound checks, shakes, splits – Can see daylight or the integrity of board is compromised (if in middle of door and can be filled, end of door can be glued)
· Grub worm holes, Pin worm holes
· Blue stain (faint, max 5% of plank)
· Burn marks, feed roller marks, chatter marks (sand if possible)
· Sap wood, rotten timber, bark (sand if possible)
The build quality will match the wood quality: The doors will be rough sawn, unhanded, uneven, with big gaps between pieces of wood, which will be pinned together with a nail gun.
Support is slow, unresponsive, and completely defensive. If you come to the shop with any other attitude, don't be offended.”
“Had a problem with one of the doors we ordered. Attitude from company was appalling.The door was damaged which we didn't notice at the time. Awful customer service - rude, belligerent and fobbing off! Husband a barrister and quoted the Consumer Rights Act 2015 at them and threatened them with ombudsman and legal action. We're pursuing the Small Claims Court with them. Do not buy from this company.”
“Ordered an oak door from this company, it went downhill from there.
The wrong door was delivered, I informed them but no apologue.Was told someone would contact me...they did not. More phone calls..still no answers. Over a week passed before I was informed that the correct door was now out of stock and would not be delivered until March!...I ordered it in January. Still the wrong door has not been collected! and I am out of pocket. Still trying to get my money back and the wrong door collected. Legal action is the next step. Do not use this company!”
“After a wait of nearly four weeks for delivery, I discovered that the half glazed door that I had ordered comes "unglazed". When I queried this point, i.e. the word "glazed in connection with glass" means that something has been fitted with glass, I was told to look at the advert which, when the "further information" is clicked on and closely examined in the many lines of very small print, says that it comes without glass.”
“Terrible customers service
phone rings for ages and this company is just a sales office and passes the order onto a 3rd party.
I ordered a door and hardware. The hardware came after one week and the door its still not here after 3 weeks.
I wouldn't use this company again”
“Awful company. I have literally spent days chasing and being fobbed off. The doors were badly damaged on arrival and yet rather than take responsibility for sorting this out, the ball was placed firmly in my court and I was expected to do all the work of chasing the delivery, documenting damage, waiting in replacements that didn’t turn up, chasing the lost order etc etc. Poor quality product and exceptionally poor service. Won’t be buying from them again.”
“One door was damaged which we didn't notice at the time. Awful customer service - belligerent and inflexible, ultimately ended up in them refusing to supply a replacement I said I would pay for then and hanging up on me when I quoted the Consumer Rights Act 2015. We're going to Trading Standards and the Small Claims Court.
As others have said, the doors don't seem to be 'solid oak' but as I know little of the construction of these things I wasn't sure if that was normal or not.”
“Ordered window sills from this company, who delivered the wrong size window board! My builder begin to cut and fit the sills prior to noticing their error! U.K. Oak doors are now refusing to offer any compensation for their error causing delays and loss of money! Would have expected a compromise at the very least! Appalling customer service and will never use again! Avoid this company!!!”
“not solid oak as advertised they engineered made from pieces of oak stuck togeather and false tennon joints made to look real none existant customer service and hid behind small print avoid this company like the pague”
“these doors are engineered wood stuck togeather not solid as advertised don't buy you can get same cheaper very bad customer service told read small print”
“Extremely poor customer service compounded by misinformation and ridiculously long delivery times. Talk about a slow boat from China ( where the products are from) would be quicker delivered by barge! My advice is buy British.”
“Ordered architrave's and received and charged for door linings. Refused to refund me until they had received the wrong items back into there warehouse. I then had to reorder and pay again for my original request. I had to wait 14 days for them to refund my money for the wrong products they sent. On calling them numerous times finally got told I was lucky that they did not charge me delivering the wrong product and only offered a half hearted apology. Use them at your own peril I would recommend you stay away from them.”
“Terrible - keep well away. Had the most appalling experience from this company, their system glich meant they sent the wrong size product and they blame me and I'm a substantial amount of money out of pocket. Even the courier who works for them told me they get non stop complaints and are alway having to send stuff back to them. BTW to send stuff back cost twice as much as to have it delivered - nice money spinner there.”
